
DADDY DARWIN’S 
DOVECOT 


FT MEADE 
GenCol I 


JULIANA HORATIA EWING 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 


mmm 








. 






T'^'. V ■. . - :' ' ■ ;: ; ';• ; 


' -.V’ ‘' -■' ■■ ''.’ ■' -, -■ V ; ,-r.. 


mV • ■ V. ■ ■ ‘ •»-■'>••••' •.••■*■'■.' 

Af ; -m’ * *. ^-1 j* r - -A. .**_\ - • 'wiL'** 








j* .> ' 



“‘iv-*-’' ’ >%■ 

'±^; V ■ 


• --*' ■ ^ ' •< <(\ jl' ^ ^ ^ . -. . — ■- : 

• « — ~. ' w*. -»*.,••. In > - ■ V - . '- .'« 

’ •/■"• ”.: '*' ; ■ '■ n. ’ '-■J '' ' 

• ,. ■• ' ^ r-- ’.-, w- . 

• -• .. >' : -yi-. : . 




.J ■,■-«• '• ^>3 




' ‘A • 




. •/ . 


m/^yr V 






‘^•^"1 :• •■- •• •• .■ 


p. .' V'.; 


*^S«s, ^ .,■ 






J . , -s 


* ^ *.* V 

;x. ■ •' r- L- 


V*'.' 

V. 


•V •; 





X^'*- ' ^.'' 


/V 




-rw'. •■ .v"v ■•: 

ravk«' *, V-'- .' • -••^- ■>r ■ ..>• -■ *',‘\ 


■y^' • 


:v^ : ■ . 

' V* ** ».r>* ^ . ’ , • w * ^ 

.-.-A • ' 

vv' S. . -' -r. 

/.I M • 

J::>v«:-;'’‘-'^. -■•.'• -V.-' 


✓ 




- ./ '•' 

'■ • 

' '• '■'i^V>^S-;.-''."''-T^.- - 


, " .'.•■•^■^17. - ■ :-< 








S. V^ AV '-.‘ ■ 



■ w ’• 

-' , 7 ' 


1 




.•- j 


fi 












■» .■^- . Jv 


• V 


■ »•' - -t . A. 

. • V, 





v , . . . 








'■it: 




. r . • . . V • t ^ ^ Cf ' 1 V . r 

'.:. ^.' v..^- 'i.VVLV'.'JJv- 

' P"- * • '* ^ ' *' j' ■^- ft 

' * - V.' * if .‘Q50‘'f21^ 


> — ■ . • '-^ . 

. ..>C 4 ‘V - - > ••. ■• " 

■. >.' ;. r •". •:;• ■ f. . 

^.'. v* ■■. '• i-! ' ‘V •;•-'• •■.' 


Pi * ’ 





















’ jr ’ 

-’•,"-«A-vi 


ft , -V w - % 








^ r» ^ ' 


- -• j; 


_ ' / ':fe 5 K m ■ 

- T ‘ - r'.^- * % ■ ■ 


/ 


- .■ . ■.' . 


r=^'-' 


tw"-. 


: 7 ^ 


SV 


. - CL ft ^ , • 

■4 - , . .^i.; ,^7 v. 


-•.n£>£At. . — * * > 



' .N 





>< ^ • 

^ fK- 



. ]<•<*-* /-' 

- J- '.♦/ 

!• • 






t •“i 


* ”• A •'— 


• >' 


• « 


Sf 


^ • «• ” ^ . jifc* >i? ■ j^W , • V V 


^ • 


*^> V-r 

A* ’.- C-.?. 


.-^j- ^ , ■ — • It*— • - “* ' 0 r' *•-.' 

■i’ - '■'-. • ' / 

*. ■' V-XnV..*"- -s ^ ■ : • *'- 

•> 'V-.-. -r » .p'* 


tr . 

'■< * 


., yV . 

. * k^ir ^ 


^i%' .. ''..^.if’'- 

-V." 



t^. 






^ \ 





• *s 














‘ ‘ There^s red bergamot ; smell it ! — P. 43 




wfliNi^ i;i 

Autl^or oj- 

Jackamapej 



Illustrated 


: new YORK 

MeLOUGHLIN BROTHERS 



Two gaffers gossiping, seated side by side. — Page 3, 

Copyright, 1906, by McLoughlin Bros., N. Y. , 





A summer’s afternoon. Early 
in the summer, and late in the 
afternoon; with odors and colors 
deepening, and shadows length- 
ening, towards evening. 

Two gaffers gossiping, seated 
side by side upon a Yorkshire 
wall. A wall of sandstone of 
many colors, glowing redder and 
yellower as the sun goes down; well cushioned 
with moss and lichen, and deep set in rank grass 
on this side, where the path runs, and in blue hya- 
cinths on that side, where the wood is, and where 
— on the gray and still naked branches of young 
oaks — sit divers crows, not less solemn than the 
gaffers, and also gossiping. 

One gaffer in work-day clothes, not unpictu- 
resque of form and hue. Gray, home-knit stock- 
ings, and coat and knee-breeches of corduroy, 
which take tints from Time and Weather as har- 
moniously as wooden palings do; so that field 
laborers (like some insects') seem to absorb or 

3 




4 DADDY DARWIN’S DOVECOT 

mimic the colors of the vegetation round them 
and of their native soil. That is, on work-days. 
Sunday-best is a different matter, and in this the 
other gaffer was clothed. He was dressed like 
the crows above him, fit excepted: the reason for 
which was, that he was only a visitor, a revisitor 
to the home of his youth, and wore his Sunday 
(and funeral) suit to mark the holiday. 

Continuing the path, a stone pack-horse track, 
leading past a hedge snow-white with may, and 
down into a little wood, from the depths of which 
one could hear a brook babbling. Then up across 
the sunny field beyond, and yet up over another 
field to where the brow of the hill is crowned by 
old farm-buildings standing against the sky. 

Down this stone path a young man going 
whistling home to tea. Then staying to bend a 
swarthy face to the white may to smell it, and 
then plucking a huge branch on which the blos- 
som lies like a heavy fall of snow, and throwing 
that aside for a better, and tearing off another 
and yet another, with the prodigal recklessness of 
a pauper ; and so, whistling, on into the wood with 
his arms full. 

Down the sunny field, as he goes up it, a wo- 
man coming to meet him — with her arms full. 
Filled by a child with a may-white frock, and hair 


DADDY DARWIN’S DOVECOT 


5 


shining with the warm colors of the sandstone. A 
young woman, having a fair forehead visible a 
long way off, and buxom cheeks, and steadfast 
eyes. When they meet he kisses her, and she 
pulls his dark hair and smooths her own, and 
cuffs him in country fashion. Then they change 
burdens, and she takes the may into her apron 
(stooping to pick up fallen bits), and the child 
sits on the man’s shoulder, and cuffs and lugs its 
father as the mother did, and is chidden by her 
and kissed by him. And all the babbling of their 
chiding and crowing and laughter comes across 
the babbling of the brook to the ears of the old 
gaffers gossiping on the wall. 

Gaffer I. spits out an over-mimched stalk of 
meadow soft-grass, and speaks : 

“D’ye see yon chap?” 

Gaffer II. takes up his hat and wipes it round 
with a spotted handkerchief (for your Sunday 
hat is a heating thing for work-day wear) and 
puts it on, and makes reply : 

“Aye. But he beats me. And — see thee ! — he’s 
t’ first that’s beat me yet. Why, lad! I’ve met 
young chaps to-day I could ha’ sworn to for 
mates of mine forty year back — if I hadn’t ha’ 
been i’ t’ churchyard spelling over their fathers’ 
tumstuns !” 


6 DADDY DARWIN’S DOVECOT 

“Aye. There’s a many old standards gone 
home o’ lately.” 

“What do they call him?"’ 

“T’ young chap?” 

“Aye.” 

“They call him — Darwin.” 

“Dar — win? I should know a Darwin. They’re 
old standards, is Darwins. What’s he to Daddy 
Darwin of t’ Dovecot yonder?” 

“He otsons t’ Dovecot. Did ye see t’ lass?” 

“Aye. Shoo’s his missus, I reckon?” 

“Aye.” 

“What did they call her?” 

“Phoebe Shaw they called her. And if she’d 
been my lass — but that’s nother here nor there, 
and he’s got t’ Dovecot.” 

“Shaw? They’re old standards, is Shaws. 
Phoebe? They called her mother Phoebe. Phoebe 
Johnson. She were a dainty lass! My father 
were very fond of Phoebe Johnson. He said she 
alius put him i’ mind of our orchard on drying 
days; pink and white apple-blossom and clean 
clothes. And yon’s her daughter? Where d’ ye 
say t’ young chap come from? He don’t look 
like hereabouts.” 

“He don’t come from hereabouts. And yet he 
do come from hereabouts, as one may say. Look 


DADDY DARWIN’S DOVECOT 7 

ye here. He come from t’ wukhus. That’s the 
short and the long of it.” 

“The workhouse?” 

“Aye.” 

Stupefaction. The crows chattering wildly 
overhead. 

“And he owns Darwin’s Dovecot?” 

“He owns Darwin’s Dovecot.” 

“And how i’ t’ name o’ all things did that come 
about?” 

“Why, I’ll tell thee. It was i’ this fashion.” 

Not without reason does the wary writer put 
gossip in the mouths of gaffers rather than of 
gammers. Male gossips love scandal as dearly as 
female gossips do, and they bring to it the 
stronger relish and energies of their sex. But 
these were country gaffers, whose speech — like 
shadows — grows lengthy in the leisurely hours of 
eventide. The gentle reader shall have the tale 
in plain narration. 

Note. — It will be plain to the reader that the birds here de- 
scribed are Rooks (corvus frugilegus). I have allowed myself to 
speak of them by their generic or family name of Crow, this being 
a common country practice. The genus corvus, or Crow, includes 
the Raven, the Carrion Crow, the Hooded Crow, the Jackdaw, and 
the Rook. 


SCENE I. 


One Saturday night (some 
eighteen years earlier than the 
date of this gaffer-gossiping) 
the parson’s daughter sat in her 
own room before the open draw- 
er of a bandy-legged black oak 
table, balancing her hags. The 
bags were money-bags, and the 
matter shall be made clear at 
once. 

In this parish, as in others, progress and the 
multiplication of weapons with which civilization 
and the powers of goodness push their conquests 
over brutality and the powers of evil, had added 
to the original duties of the parish priest, a multi- 
farious and all but impracticable variety of 
offices; which, in ordinary and laic conditions, 
would have been performed by several more or 
less salaried clerks, bankers, accountants, secre- 
taries, librarians, club-committees, teachers, lec- 
turers, discount - for - ready - money dealers in 
clothing, boots, blankets, and coal, domestic-serv- 




DADDY DARWIN’S DOVECOT 9 

ant agencies, caterers for the public amusement, 
and preservers of the public peace. 

The country parson (no less than statesmen 
and princes, than men of science and of letters) 
is responsible for a great deal of his work that is 
really done by the help-mate — woman. This ex- 
plains why five out of the young lady’s money- 
bags bore the following inscriptions in marking- 
ink: “Savings bank,” “Clothing club,” “Li- 
brary,” “Magazines and hymn-books,” “Three- 
halfpenny club;” and only three bore reference to 
private funds, as “House-money,” “Allowance,” 
“Charity.” 

It was the bag bearing this last and greatest 
name which the parson’s daughter now seized and 
emptied into her lap. A ten-shilling piece, some 
small silver, and two-pence halfpenny jingled to- 
gether, and roused a silver-haired, tawny -pawed 
terrier, who left the hearthrug and came to smell 
what was the matter. His mistress’s right hand 
— absently caressing — quieted his feelings; and 
with the left she held the ten-shilling piece be- 
tween finger and thumb, and gazed thoughtfully 
at the other bags as they squatted in a helpless 
row, with twine-tied mouths hanging on all sides. 
It was only after anxious consultation with an 
account book that the half sovereign was ex- 


10 


DADDY DARWIN’S DOVECOT 


changed for silver; thanks to the clothing-club 
bag, which looked leaner for the accomodation. 
In the three-halfpenny bag (which bulged with 
pence) some silver was further solved into cop- 
per, and the charity bag was handsomely dis- 
tended before the whole lot was consigned once 
more to the table-drawer. 

Anyone accustomed to book-keeping must 
smile at this bag-keeping of accounts ; but the 
parson’s daughter could never “bring her mind” 
to keeping the funds apart on paper, and mixing 
the actual cash. Indeed, she could never have 
brought her conscience to it. Unless she had 
taken the tenth for “charity” from her dress and 
pocket-money in coin, and put it then and there 
into the charity bag, this self-imposed rule of the 
duty of almsgiving would not have been per- 
formed to her soul’s peace. 

The problem which had been exercising her 
mind that Saturday night was how to spend what 
was left of her benevolent fund in a treat for the 
children of the neighboring workhouse. The 
fund was low, and this had decided the matter. 
The following Wednesday would be her twenty- 
first birthday. If the children came to tea with 
her, the foundation of the entertainment would, 
in the natural course of things, be laid in the 


DADDY DARWIN’S DOVECOT 


II 


Vicarage kitchen. The charity bag would pro- 
' vide the extras of the feast, — nuts, toys, and the 
like. 

When the parson’s daughter locked the drawer 
of the bandy-legged table, she did so with the 
vigor of one who has made up her mind, and set 
about the rest of her Saturday night’s duties 
without further delay. 

She put out her Sunday elothes, and her Bible 
and Prayer-book, and class-book and pencil, on 
the oak chest at the foot of the bed. She brushed 
and combed the silver-haired terrier, who looked 
abjectly depressed whilst this was doing, and pre- 
posterously proud when it was done. She washed 
her own hair, and studied her Sunday-school les- 
son for the morrow whilst it was drying. She 
spread a colored quilt at the foot of her white one, 
for the terrier to sleep on — a slur which he always 
deeply resented. 

Then she went to bed, and slept as one ought to 
sleep on Saturday night, who is bound to be at the 
Sunday-sehool by 9.15 on the following morning, 
with a clear mind on the Rudiments of the Faith, 
the history of the Prophet Elisha, and the desti- 
nation of eaeh of the parish magazines. 


SCENE II. 


Fatherless — motherless — 
homeless ! 

A little workhouse boy, M^ith a 
swarthy face and tidily -cropped 
black hair, as short and thick as 
the fur of a mole, was grubbing, 
not quite so cleverly as a mole, in 
the workhouse garden. 

He had been set to weed, but 
the weeding was very irregularly performed, for 
his eyes and heart were in the clouds, as he could 
see them over the big boundary waU. For there 
— now dark against the white, now white against 
the gray — some Air Tumbler pigeons were turn- 
ing summersaults on their homeward way, at 
such short and regular intervals that they seemed 
to be tying knots in their lines of flight. 

It was too much! The small gardener shame- 
lessly abandoned his duties, and, curving his dirty 
paws on each side of his mouth, threw his whole 
soul into shouting words of encouragement to the 
distant birds. 



12 


DADDY DARWIN’S DOVECOT |3 

“That’s a good ’un ! On with thee ! Over ye go ! 
Oo — ooray !” 

It was this last prolonged cheer which drowned 
the sound of footsteps on the path behind him, so 
that if he had been a tumbler pigeon himself he 
could not have jumped more nimbly when a 
man’s hand fell upon his shoulder. Up went his 
arms to shield his ears from a well -merited 
cuffing; but Fate was kinder to him than he de- 
served. It was only an old man (prematurely 
aged with drink and consequent poverty) , whose 
faded eyes seemed to rekindle as he also gazed 
after the pigeons, and spoke as one who knows. 

“Yon’s Daddy Darwin’s Tumblers.” 

This old pauper had only lately come into “the 
House” (the house that never was a home!) , and 
the boy clung eagerly to his flannel sleeve, and 
plied him thick and fast with questions about the 
world without the workhouse walls, and about the 
happy owner of those yet happier creatures who 
were free not only on the earth, but in the skies. 

The poor old pauper was quite as willing to talk 
as the boy was to listen. It restored some of that 
self-respect which we lose under the consequences 
of our follies to be able to say that Daddy Dar- 
win and he had been mates together, and had 



The parson’s daughter had come, the children were about to sing 
for her. — Page 16 . 


14 


DADDY DARWIN’S DOVECOT |5 

had pigeon-fancying in common “many a long 
year afore” he came into the House. 

And so these two made friendship over such 
matters as will bring man and boy together to 
the end of time. And the old pauper waxed elo- 
quent on the feats of Homing Birds and Tum- 
blers, and on the points of Almond and Barbs, 
Fantails and Pouters; sprinkling his narrative 
also with high-sounding and heterogeneous titles, 
such as Dragons and Archangels, Blue Owls and 
Black Priests, Jacobines, English Horsemen and 
Trumpeters. And through much boasting of the 
high stakes he had had on this and that pigeon- 
match then, and not a few bitter complaints of 
the harsh hospitality of the House he “had come 
to” now, it never occurred to him to connect the 
two, or to warn the lad who hung upon his lips 
that one cannot eat his cake with the rash appe- 
tites of youth, and yet hope to have it for the 
support and nourishment of his old age. 

The longest story the old man told was of a 
“bit of a trip” he had made to Liverpool, to see 
some Antwerp Carriers flown from thence to 
Ghent, and he flxed the date of this by remember- 
ing that his twin sons were born in his absence, 
and that though their birthday was the very day 
of the race, his “missus turned stoopid,” as women 


16 DADDY DARWIN’S DOVECOT 

(he warned the hoy) are apt to do, and refused 
to have them christened by uncommon names con- 
nected with the fancy. All the same, he bet the 
lads would have been nicknamed the Antwerp 
Carriers, and known as such to the day of their 
death, if this had not come so soon and so sud- 
denly, of croup; when (as it oddly chanced) he 
was off on another “bit of a holiday” to fly some 
pigeons of his own in Lincolnshire. 

This tale had not come to an end when a voice 
of authority called for “Jack March,” who 
rubbed his mole-like head and went ruefully off, 
muttering that he should “catch it now.” 

“Sure enough! sure enough!” chuckled the un- 
amiable old pauper. 

But again Fate was kinder to the lad than his 
friend. His negligent weeding passed unno- 
ticed, because he was wanted in a hurry to join 
the other children in the school-room. The par- 
son’s daughter had come, the children were about 
to sing to her, and Jack’s voice could not be dis- 
pensed with. 

He “cleaned himself” with alacrity, and tak- 
ing his place in the circle of boys standing with 
their hands behind their backs, he lifted up a 
voice worthy of a cathedral choir, whilst vary- 


DADDY DARWIN’S DOVECOT |7 

ing the monotony of sacred song by secretly 
snatching at the tail of the terrier as it went snuff- 
ing round the legs of the group. And in this feat 
he proved as much superior to the rest of the 
boys (who also tried it) as he excelled them in the 
art of singing. 

Later on he learnt that the young lady had 
come to invite them all to have tea with her on 
her birthday. Later still he found the old pauper 
once more, and questioned him closely about the 
village and the Vicarage, and as to which of the 
parishioners kept pigeons, and where. 

And when he went to his straw bed that night, 
and his black head throbbed with visions and high 
hopes, these were not entirely of the honor of 
drinking tea with a pretty young lady, and how 
one should behave himself in such abashing cir- 
cumstances. He did not even dream principally 
of the possibility of getting hold of that silver- 
haired, tawny-pawed dog by the tail under freer 
conditions than those of this afternoon, though 
that was a refreshing thought. 

What kept him long awake was thinking of 
this. From the top of an old walnut-tree at the 
top of a field at the back of the Vicarage, you 
could see a hill and on the top of the hill some 


]6 


DADDY DARWIN’S DOVECOT 


farm buildings. And it was here (so the old 
pauper had told him) that those pretty pigeons 
lived, who, though free to play about among the 
clouds, yet condescended to make an earthly 
home in Daddy Darwin’s Dovecot. 



SCENE III. 


Two and two, girls and boys, 
the young lady’s guests marched 
down to the Vicarage. The 
school-mistress was anxious that 
each should carry his and her tin 
mug, so as to give as little trou- 
ble as possible; but this was res- 
olutely declined, much to the 
children’s satisfaction, who had 
their walk with free hands, and their tea out of 
teacups and saucers like anybody else. 

It was a fine day, and all went well. The chil- 
dren enjoyed themselves, and behaved admirably 
into the bargain. There was only one suspicion 
of misconduct, and the matter was so far from 
clear that the parson’s daughter hushed it up, 
and, so to speak, dismissed the case. 

The children were playing at some game in 
which Jack March was supposed to excel, but 
when they came to look for him he could nowhere 
be found. At last he was discovered, high up 
among the branches of an old walnut-tree at the 
top of the field, and though his hands were un- 

19 



20 DADDY DARWIN’S DOVECOT 

stained and his pockets empty, the gardener, who 
had been the first to spy him, now loudly de- 
nounced him as an ungrateful young thief. Jack, 
with swollen eyes and cheeks besmirched with 
angry tears, was vehemently declaring that he 
had only climbed the tree to “have a look at Mas- 
ter Darwin’s pigeons,” and had not picked so 
much as a leaf, let alone a walnut; and the gar- 
dener, “shaking the truth out of him” by the col- 
lar of his fustian jacket, was preaching loudly on 
the sin of adding falsehood to theft, when the 
parson’s daughter came up, and, in the end, ac- 
quitted poor Jack, and gave him leave to amuse 
himself as he pleased. 

It did not please Jack to play with his com- 
rades just then. He felt sulky and aggrieved. 
He would have liked to play with the terrier who 
had stood by him in his troubles, and barked at 
the gardener; but that little friend now trotted 
after his mistress, who had gone to choir-practice. 

Jack wandered about among the shrubberies. 
By-and-by he heard sounds of music, and led by 
these he came to a gate in a wall, dividing the 
Vicarage garden from the churchyard. Jack 
loved music, and the organ and the voices drew 
him on till he reached the church porch ; but there 
he was startled by a voice that was not only not 


DADDY DARWIN’S DOVECOT 21 

the voice of song, but was the utterance of a 
' moan so doleful that it seemed the outpouring of 
all his own lonely, and outcast, and injured feel- 
ings in one comprehensive howl. 

It was the voice of the silver-haired terrier. He 
was sitting in the porch, his nose up, his ears 
down, his eyes shut, his mouth open, bewailing in 
bitterness of spirit the second and greater crook 
of his lot. 

To what purpose were all the caresses and care 
and indulgence of his mistress, the daily walks, 
the weekly washings and combings, the constant 
companionship, when she betrayed her abiding 
sense of his inferiority, first, by not letting him 
sleep on the white quilt, and secondly, by never 
allowing him to go to church? 

Jack shared the terrier’s mood. What were 
tea and plum-cake to him, when his pauper- 
breeding was so stamped upon him that the gar- 
dener was free to say — “A nice tale too ! What’s 
thou to do wi’ doves, and thou a work’us lad?” — 
and to take for granted that he would thieve and 
lie if he got the chance? 

His disabilities were not the dog’s, however. 
The parish church was his as well as another’s, 
and he crept inside and leaned against one of the 
stone pillars, as if it were a big, calm friend. 


22 DADDY DARWIN’S DOVECOT 

Far away, under the transept, a group of boys 
and men held their music near to their faces in 
the waning light. Among them towered the burly 
choir-master, bMon in hand. The parson’s 
daughter was at the organ. Well accustomed to 
produce his voice to good purpose, the choir-mas- 
ter’s words were clearly to be heard throughout 
the building, and it was on the subject of articu- 
lation and emphasis, and the like, that he was 
speaking; now and then throwing in an extra 
aspirate in the energy of that enthusiasm with- 
out which teaching is not worth the name. 

“That’ll not do. We must have it altogether 
different. You two lads are singing like bumble- 
bees in a pitcher — ^border there, boys! — it’s no 
laughing matter — put down those papers and 
keep your eyes on me — inflate the chest” — his 
own seemed to fill the field of vision) “and try 
and give forth those noble words as if you’d an 
idea what they meant.” 

No satire was intended or taken here, but the 
two boys, who were practicing their duet in an 
anthem, laid down the music, and turned their 
eyes on their teacher. 

“I’ll run through the recitative,” he added, 
“and take your time from the stick. Amd mind 
that Oh.” 


DADDY DARWIN’S DOVECOT 23 

The parson’s daughter struck a chord, and 
then the burly choir-master spoke with the voice 
of melody, — 

“My heart is disquieted within me. My heart 
— my heart is disquieted within me. And the 
fear of death is fallen — is fallen upon me.” 

The terrier moaned without, and Jack thought 
no boy’s voice could be worth listening to after 
that of the choir-master. But he was wrong. A 
few more notes from the organ, and then, as 
night-stillness in a wood is broken by the nightin- 
gale, so upon the silence of the church a boy- 
alto’s voice broke forth in obedience to the choir- 
master’s uplifted hand : 

“Then, I said — I said — ” 

Jack gasped, but even as he strained his eyes 
to see what such a singer could look like, with 
higher, clearer notes the soprano rose above him 
— “Then I sa — a — id,” and the duet began: 

“Oh, that I had wings — Oh, that I had wings 
like a dove !” 

Soprano. — “Then would I flee away.” Alto. 
— “Then would I flee away.” Together. — “And 
be at rest — flee away and be at rest.” 

The clear young voices soared and chased each 
other among the arches, as if on the very pinions 
for which they prayed. Then — swept from their 


24 DADDY DARWIN’S DOVECOT 

seats by an upward sweep of the choir-master’s 
arms — the chorus rose as birds rise, and carried 
on the strain. 

It was not a very fine composition, but this 
final chorus had the singular charm of fugue. 
And as the voices mourned like doves, “Oh, that 
I had wings!” and pursued each other with the 
plaintive passage, “Then would I flee away — 
then would I flee away — ,” Jack’s ears knew no 
weariness of the repetition. It was strangely 
like watching the rising and falling of Daddy 
Darwin’s pigeons, as they tossed themselves by 
turns upon their homeward flight. 

After the fashion of the piece and period, the 
chorus was repeated, and the singers rose to su- 
preme effort. The choir-master’s hands flashed 
hither and thither, controlling, inspiring, direct- 
ing. He sang among the tenors. 

Jack’s voice nearly choked him with longing to 
sing too. Could words of man go more deeply 
home to a young heart caged within workhouse 
walls? 

“Oh, that I had wings like a dove! Then 
would I flee away — ” choir-master’s white 
hands were fluttering downwards in the dusk, 
and the chorus sang with time — “flee away and 
be at rest!” 


SCENE IV. 


Jack March had a busy little 
brain, and his nature was not of 
the limp type that sits down 
with a grief. That most mem- 
orable tea-party had fired his 
soul with two distinct ambitions. 
First, to be a choir-boy ; and, sec- 
ondly, to dwell in Daddy Dar- 
win’s Dovecot. He turned the 
matter over in his mind, and patched together the 
following facts : 

The Board of Guardians meant to apprentice 
him. Jack, to some master, at the earliest oppor- 
tunity. Daddy Darwin (so the old pauper told 
him) was a strange old man, who had come down 
in the world, and now lived quite alone, with not 
a soul to help him in the house or outside it. He 
was “not to say mazelin yet, but getting helpless, 
and uncommon mean.” 

A nephew came one fine day and fetched away 
the old pauper, to his great delight. It was by 
their hands that Jack despatched a letter, which 

25 




When Friday came he “faced the Board.”— Page 97. 


26 



DADDY DARWIN’S DOVECOT 


27 


the nephew stamped and posted for him, and 
which was duly delivered on the following morn- 
ing to Mr. Darwin of the Dovecot. 

The old man had no correspondents, and he 
looked long at the letter before he opened it. It 
did credit to the teaching of the workhouse 
school-mistress: 

“Honored Sir, 

“They call me Jack March. I’m a workhouse lad, but, Sir, 
I’m a good one, and the Board means to ’prentice me next time. 
Sir, if you face the Board and take me out you shall never regret 
it. Though I says it as shouldn’t I’m a handy lad. I’ll clean a floor 
with any one, and am willing to work early and late, and at your 
time of life you’re not what you was, and them birds must take a 
deal of seeing to. I can see them from the garden when I’m set 
to weed, and I never saw nought like them. Oh, Sir, I do beg and 
pray you let me mind yomr pigeons. You’ll be none the worse of 
a lad about the place, and I shall be happy all the days of my life. 
Sir, I’m not unthankful, but, please God, I should like to have a 
home, and to be with them house doves. 

“From your humble servant — hoping to be — 

“JACK MARCH. 

“Mr. Darwin, Sir. I love them Tumblers as if they was my 
own.” 

Daddy Darwin thought hard and thought 
long over that letter. He changed his mind fifty 
times a day. But Friday was the Board day, and 
when Friday came he “faced the Board.” And 
the little workhouse lad went home to Daddy 
Darwin’s Dovecot. 


SCENE V. 


The bargain was oddly made, 
but it worked well. Whatever 
J ack’s parentage may have been 
(and he was named after the 
stormy month in which he had 
been born), the blood that ran 
in his veins could not have been 
beggars’ blood. There was no 
hopeless, shiftless, invincible 
idleness about him. He found work for himself 
when it was not given him to do, and he attached 
himself passionately and proudly to all the be- 
longings of his new home. 

“Yon lad of yours seems handy enough, 
Daddy, — for a vagrant, as one may say.” 

Daddy Darwin was smoking over his garden 
wall, and Mrs. Shaw, from the neighboring 
farm, had paused in her walk for a chat. She 
was a notable housewife, and there was just a 
touch of envy in her sense of the improved ap- 
pearance of the doorsteps and other visible points 
of the Dovecot. Daddy Darwin took his pipe 

38 



DADDY DARWIN’S DOVECOT 29 

out of his mouth to make way for the force of his 
reply: 

“Vagrant! Nay, missus, yon’s no vagrant. 
He’s fettling up all along. Jack’s the sort that 
if he finds a key he’ll look for the lock ; if ye give 
him a knife-blade he’ll fashion a heft. Why, a 
vagrant’s a chap that, if he’d all your maester 
owns to-morrow, he’d be on the tramp again 
afore t’ year were out, and three years wouldn’t 
repair t’ mischief he’d leave behind him. A va- 
grant’s a chap that if ye lend him a thing he loses 
it ; if ye give him a thing he abuses it — ” 

“That’s true enough, and there’s plenty serv- 
ant-girls the same,” put in Mrs. Shaw. 

“Maybe there be, ma’am — maybe there be; va- 
grant’s children, I reckon. But yon little chap I 
got from t’ House comes of folk that’s had stuff 
o’ their own, and cared for it — choose who they 
were.” 

“Well, Daddy,” said his neighbor, not without 
malice, “I’ll wish you a good evening. You’ve 
got a good bargain out of the parish, it seems.” 

But Daddy Darwin only chuckled, and stirred 
up the ashes in the bowl of his pipe. 

“The same to you, ma’am — the same to you. 
Ay! he’s a good bargain — a very good bargain is 
Jack March.” 


30 DADDY DARWIN’S DOVECOT 

It might be supposed from the foregoing dia- 
logue that Daddy Darwin was a model house- 
holder, and the little workhouse boy the neatest 
creature breathing. But the gentle reader who 
may imagine this is much mistaken. 

Daddy Darwin’s Dovecot was freehold, and 
when he inherited it from his father there was 
still attached to it a good bit of the land that had 
passed from father to son through more genera- 
tions than the church registers were old enough 
to record. But the few remaining acres were so 
heavily mortgaged that they had to be sold. So 
that a bit of house property elsewhere, and the 
old homestead itself, were all that was left. And 
Daddy Darwin had never been the sort of man 
to retrieve his luck at home, or to seek it abroad. 

That he had inherited a somewhat higher and 
more refined nature than his neighbors had rather 
hindered than helped him to prosper. And he 
had been unlucky in love. When what energies 
he had were in their prime, his father’s death left 
him with such poor prospects that the old farmer 
to whose daughter he was betrothed broke off the 
match and married her elsewhere. His Alice was 
not long another man’s wife. She died within a 
year from her wedding-day, and her husband 
married again within a year from her death. Her 


DADDY DARWIN’S DOVECOT 


31 


old lover was no better able to mend his broken 
heart than his broken fortunes. He only ban- 
ished women from the Dovecot, and shut himself 
up from the coarse consolation of his neighbors. 

In this loneliness, eating a kindly heart out in 
bitterness of spirit, with all that he ought to have 
had — 

To plough and sow 

And reap and mow — 

gone from him, and in the hands of strangers, the 
pigeons, for which the Dovecot had always been 
famous, became the business and the pleasure of 
his life. But of late years his stock had dwindled, 
and he rarely went to pigeon-matches or com- 
peted in shows and races. A more miserable 
fancy rivalled his interest in pigeon fancying. 
His new hobby was hoarding; and money that, a 
few years hack, he would have freely spent to 
improve his breed of Tumblers or back his Hom- 
ing Birds he now added with stealthy pleasure to 
the store behind the secret panel of a fine old oak 
bedstead that had belonged to the Darwyn who 
owned Dovecot when the sixteenth century was 
at its latter end. In this bedstead Daddy slept 
lightly of late, as old men will, and he had horrid 
dreams, which old men need not have. The queer 
faces carved on the panels (one of which hid the 


32 


DADDY DARWIN’S DOVECOT 


money hole) used to frighten him when he was a 
child. They did not frighten him now by their 
grotesque ugliness, but when he looked at them, 
and knew which was which, he dreaded the dying 
out of twilight into dark, and dreamed of aged 
men living alone, who had been murdered for 
their savings. These growing fears had had no 
small share in deciding him to try Jack March; 
and to see the lad growing stronger, nimbler, and 
more devoted to his master’s interests day by day, 
was a nightly comfort to the poor old hoarder in 
the bed-head. 

As to his keen sense of Jack’s industry and 
carefulness, it was part of the incompleteness of 
Daddy Darwin’s nature, and the ill-luck of his 
career, that he had a sensitive perception of order 
and beauty, and a shrewd observation of ways of 
living and qualities of character, and yet had al- 
lowed his early troubles to blight him so com- 
pletely that he never put forth an etfort to rise 
above the ruin, of which he was at least as con- 
scious as his neighbors. 

That Jack was not the neatest creature breath- 
ing, one look at him, as he stood with pigeons on 
his head and arms and shoulders, would have been 
enough to prove. As the first and readiest re- 
pudiation of his workhouse antecedents he had 


DADDY DARWIN’S DOVECOT 


33 


let his hair grow till it hung in the wildest of elf- 
locks, and though the terms of his service with 
Daddy Darwin would not, in any case, have pro- 
vided him with handsome clothes, such as he had 
were certainly not the better for any attention he 
bestowed upon them. As regarded the Dovecot, 
however. Daddy Darwin had not done more than 
justice to his bargain. A strong and grateful at- 
tachment to his master, and a passionate love for 
the pigeons he tended, kept Jack constantly busy 
in the service of both; the old pigeon-fancier 
taught him the benefits of scrupulous cleanliness 
in the pigeon-cot, and Jack “stoned” the kitchen- 
floor and the doorsteps on his own responsibility. 

The time did come when he tidied up himself. 



SCENE VI. 


Daddy Darwin had made the 
first breach in his solitary life of 
his own free will, but it was 
fated to widen. The parson’s 
daughter soon heard that he had 
got a lad from the workhouse, 
the very boy who sang so well 
and had climbed the walnut-tree 
to look at Daddy Darwin’s pig- 
eons. The most obvious parish questions at once 
presented themselves to the young lady’s mind. 
“Had the boy been christened? Did he go to 
Church and Sunday-school? Did he say his 
prayers and know his Catechism? Had he a 
Sunday suit? Would he do for the choir?” 

Then, supposing (a not uncommon case) that 
the boy had been christened, said he said his pray- 
ers, knew his Catechism, and was ready for 
school, church, and choir, but had not got a Sun- 
day suit — a fresh series of riddles propounded 
themselves to her busy brain. Would her father 
yield up his every-day coat and take his Sunday 

34 





36 


DADDY DARWIN’S DOVECOT 


one into week-day wear? Could the charity bag 
do better than pay the tailor’s widow for adapt- 
ing this old coat to the new chorister’s back, tak- 
ing it in at the seams, turning it wrongside out, 
and getting new sleeves out of the old tails? 
Could she herself spare the boots which the 
village cobbler had just resoled for her — some- 
what clumsily — and would the “allowance” bag 
bear this strain? Might she hope to coax an old 
pair of trousers out of her cousin, who was 
spending his Long Vacation at the Vicarage, 
and who never reckoned very closely with his al- 
lowance, and kept no charity bag at all? Lastly, 
would “that old curmudgeon at the Dovecot,” let 
his little farm-boy go to church and school and 
choir? 

“I must go and persuade him,” said the young 
lady. 

What she said, and what (at the time) Daddy 
Darwin did. Jack never knew. He was at high 
sport with the terrier round the big sweetbrier 
bush, when he saw his old master splitting the 
seams of his weather-beaten coat in the haste with 
which he plucked crimson clove carnations, as if 
they had been dandelions, and presented them, 
not ungracefully, to the parson’s daughter. 

J ack knew why she had come, and strained his 


DADDY DARWIN’S DOVECOT 37 

ears to catch his own name. But Daddy Darwin 
was promising pipings of the cloves. 

“They are such dear old-fashioned things,” 
said she, burying her nose in the bunch. 

“We’re old-fashioned altogether, here. Miss,” 
said Daddy Darwin, looking wistfully at the 
tumble-down house behind them. 

“You’re very pretty here,” said she, looking 
also, and thinking what a sketch it would make, 
if she could keep on friendly terms with this old 
recluse, and get leave to sit in the garden. Then 
her conscience smiting her for selfishness, she 
turned her big eyes on him and put out her small 
hand. 

“I am very much obliged to you, Mr. Darwin, 
very much obliged to you indeed. And I hope 
that Jack will do credit to your kindness. And 
thank you so much for the cloves,” she added, 
hastily changing a subject which had cost some 
argument, and which she did not wish to have re- 
opened. 

Daddy Darwin had thoughts of reopening it. 
He was slowly getting his ideas together to say 
that the lad should see how he got along with the 
school before trying the choir, when he found 
the young lady’s hand in his, and had to take care 


38 


DADDY DARWIN’S DOVECOT 


not to hurt it, whilst she rained thanks on him for 
the flowers. 

“You’re freely welcome, Miss,” was what he 
did say after all. 

In the evening, however, he was very moody, 
but Jack was dying of curiosity, and at last 
could contain himself no longer. 

“What did Miss J'enny want. Daddy?” he 
asked. 

The old man looked very grim. 

“First to mak’ a fool of me, and i’ t’ second 
place to mak’ a fool of thee,” was his reply. And 
he added with pettish emphasis, “They’re all 
alike, gentle and simple. Lad, lad ! If ye’d have 
any peace of your life never let a woman’s foot 
across your threshold. Steek t’ door of your house 
— if ye own one — and t’ door o’ your heart — if ye 
own one — and then ye’ll never rue. Look at this 
coat !” 

And the old man went grumpily to bed, and 
dreamed that Miss Jenny had put her little foot 
over his threshold, and that he had shown her the 
secret panel, and let her take away his savings. 

And Jack went to bed, and dreamed that he 
went to school, and showed himself to Phoebe 
Shaw in his Sunday suit. 

This dainty little damsel had long been mak- 


DADDY DARWIN’S DOVECOT 39 

irig havoc in Jack’s heart. The attraction must 
have been one of contrast, for whereas Jaek was 
black and grubby, and had only week-day clothes 
— which were ragged at that — Phcebe was fair, 
and exquisitely clean, and quite terribly tidy. 
Her mother was the neatest woman in the parish. 
It was she who was wont to say to her trembling 
handmaid, “I hope I can black a grate without 
blacking myself.” But little Phoebe promised so 
far to outdo her mother, that it seemed doubtful 
if she could “black herself” if she tried. Only 
the bloom of childhood could have resisted the 
polishing effects of yellow soap, as Phoebe’s 
brow and cheeks did resist it. Her shining hair 
was compressed into a plait that would have done 
credit to a rope-maker. Her pinafores were 
speckless, and as to her white Whitsun frock — 
Jack could think of nothing the least like Phoebe 
in that, except a snowy fantail strutting about 
the dovecot roof ; and, to say the truth, the like- 
ness was most remarkable. 

It has been shown that Jack March had a mind 
to be master of his fate, and he did succeed in 
making friends with little Phoebe Shaw. This 
was before Miss Jenny’s visit, but the incident 
shall be recorded here. 

Early on Sunday mornings it was Jaek’s cus- 


40 


DADDY DARWIN’S DOVECOT 


tom to hide his work-day garb in an angle of the 
ivy-covered wall of the Dovecot garden, only let- 
ting his head appear over the top, from whence 
he watched to see Phcebe pass on her way to 
Sunday-school, and to bewilder himself with the 
sight of her starched frock, and her airs with her 
Bible and Prayer-book, and class card, and clean 
pocket-handkerchief. 

Now, amongst the rest of her Sunday para- 
phernalia, Phoebe always carried a posy, made up 
with herbs and some strong-smelling flowers. 
Country-women take mint and southernwood to 
a long hot service, as fine ladies take smelling 
bottles {for it is a pleasant delusion with some 
writers, that the weaker sex is a strong sex in the 
working classes). And though Phoebe did not 
sufTer from “fainty feels” like her mother, she 
and her little playmates took posies to Sunday- 
school, and refreshed their nerves in the steam 
of question and answer, and hair-oil and cordu- 
roy, with all the airs of their elders. 

One day she lost her posy on her way to school, 
and her loss was Jack’s opportunity. He had 
been waiting half-an-hour among the ivy, when 
he saw her just below him, fuzzling round and 
round like a kitten chasing its tail. He sprang 
to the top of the wall. 


DADDY DARWIN’S DOVECOT 


41 


“Have ye lost something?” he gasped. 

“My posy,” said poor Phoebe, lifting her 
sweet eyes, which were full of tears. 

A second spring brought Jack into the dust at 
her feet, where he searched most faithfully, and 
was wandering along the path by which she had 
come, when she called him back. 

“Never mind,” said she. “They’ll most likely 
be dusty by now.” 

Jack was not used to think the worse of any- 
thing for a coating of dust; but he paused, try- 
ing to solve the perpetual problem of his situa- 
tion, and find out what the little maid really 
wanted. 

“ ’Twas only Old Man and marigolds,” said 
she. “They’re common enough.” 

A light illuminated Jack’s imderstanding. 

“We’ve Old Man i’ plenty; wait, and I’ll get 
thee a fresh posy.” And he began to reclimb the 
wall. 

But Phoebe drew nearer. She stroked down 
her frock, and spoke mincingly but confiden- 
tially. “My mother says Daddy Darwin has red 
bergamot i’ his garden. We’ve none i’ ours. My 
mother always says there’s nothing like red ber- 
gamot to take to church. She says it’s a deal 
more refreshing than Old Man, and not so com- 


42 


DADDY DARWIN’S DOVECOT 


mon. My mother says she’s always meaning to 
ask Daddy Darwin to let us have a root to set; 
hut she doesn’t oftens see him, and when she does 
she doesn’t think on. But she always says there’s 
nothing like red hergamot; and my Aunt Nancy, 
she says the same.” 

“Red is it?” cried Jack. “You wait there, 
love.” And before Phoehe could say him nay, he 
was over the wall and hack again with his arms 
full. 

“Is it any o’ this lot?” he inquired, dropping a 
small haycock of flowers at her feet. 

“Don’t ye know one from t’ other?” asked 
Phoebe, with round eyes of reproach. And 
spreading her clean kerchief on the grass, she 
laid her Bible and Prayer-book and class card on 
it, and set vigorously and nattily to work, pick- 
ing one flower and another from the fragrant 
confusion, nipping the stalks to even lengths, re- 
jecting withered leaves, and instructing Jack as 
she proceeded. 

“I suppose ye know a rose? That’s a double 
velvet.* They dry sweeter than lavender for 
linen. These dark red things is pheasants’ eyes; 
but, dear, dear, what a lad ! ye’ve dragged it up 

^Double Velvet, an old summer rose, not common now. It is 
described by Parkinson. 


DADDY DARWIN’S DOVECOT 


43 


by the roots! And eh! what will Master Darwin 
say when he misses these pink hollyhoeks? And 
only in bud, too! There’s red bergamot;* smell 
it!” 

It had barely touehed Jack’s willing nose when 
it was hastily withdrawn. Phoebe had caught 
sight of Polly and Susan Smith coming to school, 
and crying that she should be late and must run, 
the little maid picked up her paraphernalia (not 
forgetting the red bergamot), and fled down the 
lane. And Jack, with equal haste, snatched up 
the tell-tale heap of flowers and threw them into 
a disused pigsty, where it was unlikely that 
Daddy Darwin would go to look for his poor 
pink hollyhocks. 

*Red Bergamot, or Twinflower. Monarda Didyma, 



SCENE VII. 


April was a busy month in 
the Dovecot. Young birds were 
chipping the egg, parent birds 
were feeding their young or re- 
lieving each other on the nest, 
and Jack and his master were 
constantly occupied and excited. 

One night Daddy Darwin 
went to bed ; but, though he was 
tired, he did not sleep long. He had sold a cou- 
ple of handsome but quarrelsome pigeons to ad- 
vantage, and had added their price to the hoard 
in the bed-head. This had renewed his old fears, 
for the store was becoming very valuable; and he 
wondered if it had really escaped Jack’s quick 
observation, or Avhether the boy knew about it, 
and perhaps talked about it. As he lay and wor- 
ried himself he fancied he heard sounds without 
— the sound of footsteps and of voices. Then his 
heart beat till he could hear nothing else ; then he 
could undoubtedly hear nothing at all; then he 
certainly heard something which probably was 
rats. And so he lay in a cold sweat, and pulled the 

44 



DADDY DARWIN’S DOVECOT 45 

rug over his face, and made up his mind to give 
the money to the parson, for the poor, if he was 
spared till daylight. 

He was spared till daylight, and had recovered 
himself, and settled to leave the money where it 
was, when Jack rushed in from the pigeon-house 
with a face of dire dismay. He made one or two 
futile efforts to speak, and then unconsciously 
used the words Shakespeare has put into the 
mouth of Macduff, “All my pretty ’uns!” and so 
burst into tears. 

And when the old man made his way to the 
pigeon-house, followed by poor Jack, he found 
that the eggs were cold and the callow young 
shivering in deserted nests, and that every bird 
was gone. And then he remembered the robbers, 
and was maddened by the thought that whilst he 
lay expecting thieves to break in and steal his 
money he had let them get safely off with his 
whole stock of pigeons. 

Daddy Darwin had never taken up arms 
against his troubles, and this one crushed him. 
The fame and beauty of his house-doves were all 
that was left of prosperity about the place, and 
now there was nothing left — nothing! Below 
this dreary thought lay a far more bitter one, 
which he dared not confide to Jack. He had 


46 DADDY DARWIN’S DOVECOT 

heard the robbers; he might have frightened them 
away; he might at least have given the lad a 
chance to save his pets, and not a care had crossed 
his mind except for the safety of his own old 
bones, and of those miserable savings in the bed- 
head, which he was enduring so much to scrape 
together (oh satire!) for a distant connection 
whom he had never seen. He crept back to the 
kitchen, and dropped in a heap upon the settle, 
and muttered to himself. Then his thoughts wan- 
dered. Supposing the pigeons were gone for 
good, would he ever make up his mind to take 
that money out of the money-hole, and buy a 
fresh stock? He knew he never would, and 
shrank into a meaner heap upon the settle as he 
said so to himself. He did not like to look his 
faithful lad in the face. 

Jack looked him in the face, and, finding no help 
there, acted pretty promptly behind his back. He 
roused the parish constable, and fetched that 
functionary to the Dovecot before he had had 
bite or sup to break his fast. He spread a meal 
for him and Daddy, and borrowed the Shaws’ 
light cart whilst they were eating it. The Shaws 
were good farmer-folk, they sympathized most 
fully; and Jack was glad of a few words of pity 
from Phoebe. She said she had watched the pretty 


DADDY DARWIN’S DOVECOT 47 

pets “many a score of times,” which comforted 
more than one of Jack’s heartstrings. Phoebe’s 
mother paid respect to his sense and prompti- 
tude. He had acted exactly as she would have 
done. 

“Daddy was right enough about yon lad,” she 
admitted. “He’s not one to let the grass grow 
under his feet.” 

And she gave him a good breakfast whilst the 
horse was being “put to.” It pleased her that 
Jack jumped up and left half a delicious cold 
tea-cake behind him when the cart-wheels grated 
outside. Mrs. Shaw sent Phoebe to put the cake 
in his pocket, and the “Maester” helped Jack in 
and took the reins. He said he would “see Daddy 
Darwin through it,” and added the weight of his 
opinion to that of the constable, that the pigeons 
had been taken to “a beastly low place” (as he 
put it) that had lately been set up for pigeon- 
shooting in the outskirts of the neighboring town. 

They paused no longer at the Dovecot than 
was needed to hustle Daddy Darwin on to the 
seat beside Master Shaw, and for Jack to fill his 
pockets with peas, and take his place beside the 
constable. He had certain ideas of his own on 
the matter, which were not confused by the jog- 


48 


DADDY DARWIN’S DOVECOT 


trot of the light cart, which did give a final jum- 
ble to poor Daddy Darwin’s faculties. 

No wonder they were jumbled! The terrors of 
the night past, the shock of the morning, the 
completeness of the loss, the piteous sight in the 
pigeon-house, remorseful shame, and then — after 
all these years, during which he had not gone 
half a mile from his own hearthstone — to be set 
up for all the world to see, on the front seat of a 
market-cart, back to back with the parish consta- 
ble, and jogged off as if miles were nothing, and 
crowded streets were nothing, and the Beaulieu 
Gardens were nothing. Master Shaw talking 
away as easily as if they were sitting in two arm- 
chairs, and making no more of “stepping into” 
a lawyer’s office, and “going on” to the Town 
Hall, than if he were talking of stepping up to 
his own bedchamber or going out into the gar- 
den! 

That day passed like a dream, and Daddy 
Darwin remembered what happened in it as one 
remembers visions of the night. 

He had a vision (a very unpleasant vision) of 
the proprietor of the Beaulieu Gardens, a big 
greasy man, with sinister eyes very close to- 
gether, and a hook nose, and a heavy watch-chain, 
and a bullying voice. He browbeat the constable 


DADDY DARWIN’S DOVECOT 49 

very soon, and even bullied Master Shaw into 
silence. No help was to be had from him in his 
loud indignation at being supposed to traffic with 
thieves. When he turned the tables by talking of 
slander, loss of time, and compensation. Daddy 
Darwin smelt money, and tremblingly whispered 
to Master Shaw to apologize and get out of it. 
“They’re gone for good,” he almost sobbed; 
“gone for good, like all t’ rest! And I’ll not be 
long after ’em.” 

But even as he spoke he heard a sound which 
made him lift up his head. It was Jack’s call at 
feeding-time to the pigeons at the Dovecot. And 
quick following on this most musical and most 
familiar sound there came another. The old man 
put both his lean hands behind his ears to be sure 
that he heard it aright — the sound of wings — the 
wings of a dove! 

The other men heard it and ran in. Whilst they 
were wrangling. Jack had slipped past them, and 
had made his way into a wired enclosure in front 
of the pigeon-house. And there they found him, 
with all the captive pigeons coming to his call; 
flying, fluttering, strutting, nestling from head 
to foot of him, he scattering peas like hail. 

He was the first to speak, and not a choke in 
his voice. His iron temperament was at white 


50 


DADDY DARWIN’S DOVECOT 


heat, and, as he afterwards said, he “cared no 
more for yon dirty chap wi’ the big nose, nor if 
he were a ratten* in a hayloft!” 

“These is ours,” he said shortly. “I’ll count 
’em over, and see if they’re right. There was only 
one young ’un that could fly. A white ’un. (“It’s 
here,” interpolated Master Shaw.) “I’ll pack 
’em i’ yon,” and Jack turned his thumb to a heap 
of hampers in a corner. “T’ carrier can leave t’ 
baskets at t’ toll-bar next Saturday, and ye may 
send your lad for ’em, if ye keep one.” 

The proprietor of the Beaulieu Gardens was 
not a man easily abashed, but most of the pigeons 
were packed before he had fairly resumed his 
previous powers of speech. Then, as Master 
Shaw said, he talked “on the other side of his 
mouth.” Most willing was he to help to bring to 
justice the scoundrels who had deceived him and 
robbed Mr. Darwin, but he feared they would be 
difficult to trace. His own feeling was that of 
wishing for pleasantness among neighbors. The 
pigeons had been found at the Gardens. That 
was enough. He would be glad to settle the bus- 
iness out of court. 

Daddy Darwin heard the chink of the dirty 
man’s money, and would have compounded the 


*Anglicd Rat. 


DADDY DAEWIN’S DOVECOT 51 

matter then and there. But not so the parish 
eonstable, who saw himself famous; and not so 
Jack, who turned eyes of smouldering fire on 
Master Shaw. 

“Maester Shaw! you’ll not let them chaps get 
off? Daddy’s mazelin wi’ trouble, sir, but I 
reckon you’ll see to it.” 

“If it costs t’ worth of the pigeons ten times 
over. I’ll see to it, my lad,” was Master Shaw’s 
reply. And the parish constable rose even to a 
vein of satire as he avenged himself of the 
man who had slighted his office. “Settle it out of 
court? Ay! I dare say. And send t’ same chaps 
to fetch ’em away again t’ night after. Nay — 
bear a hand with this hamper, Maester Shaw, if 
you please — if it’s all t’ same to you, Mr. Pro- 
prietor, I think we shall have to trouble you to 
step up to t’ Town Hall by-and-by, and see if we 
can’t get shut of them mistaking friends o’ yours 
for three month anyway.” 

If that day was a trying one to Daddy Dar- 
win, the night that followed it was far worse. 
The thieves were known to the police, and the 
case was down to come on at the Town Hall the 
following morning; but meanwhile the constable 
thought fit to keep the pigeons under his own 
charge in the village lock-up. Jack refused to be 


52 DADDY DARWIN’S DOVECOT 

parted from his birds, and remained with them, 
leaving Daddy Darwin alone in the Dovecot. He 
dared not go to bed, and it was not a pleasant 
night that he spent, dozing with weariness, and 
starting up with fright, in an arm-chair facing 
the money-hole. 

Some things that he had been nervous about he 
got quite used to, however. He bore himself with 
sufficient dignity in the publicity of the Town 
Hall, where a great sensation was created by the 
pigeons being let loose without, and coming to 
Jack’s call. Some of them fed from the boy’s 
lips, and he was the hero of the hour, to Daddy 
Darwin’s delight. 

Then the lawyer and the lawyer’s office proved 
genial and comfortable to him. He liked civil 
ways and smooth speech, and understood them 
far better than Master Shaw’s brevity and un- 
couthness. The lawyer chatted kindly and in- 
telligently ; he gave Daddy Darwin wine and bis- 
cuit, and talked of the long standing of the Dar- 
win family and its vicissitudes; he even took 
down some fat yellow books, and showed the old 
man how many curious laws had been made from 
time to time for the special protection of pigeons 
in dovecots. Very ancient statutes making the 
killing of a house-dove felony. Then 1 James I. 


DADDY DARWIN’S DOVECOT 53 

c. 29, awarded three months’ imprisonment 
“without bail or mainprise” to any person who 
should “shoot at, kill, or destroy with any gun, 
crossboy, stonebow, or longbow, any house-dove 
or pigeon;” but allowed an alternative fine of 
twenty shillings to be paid to the church wardens 
of the parish for the benefit of the poor. Daddy 
Darwin hoped there was no such alternative in 
this case, and it proved that 2 Geo. III. c. 29, the 
twenty-shilling fine was transferred to the owner 
of birds; at which point another client called; 
and the polite lawyer left Daddy to study the 
laws by himself. 

It was when Jack was helping Master Shaw 
to put the horse into the cart, after the trial was 
over, that the farmer said to him, ‘I don’t want 
to put you about, my lad, but I’m afraid you 
won’t keep your master long. T’ old gentleman’s 
breaking up, mark my words ! Constable and me 
was going into the George for a glass, and Mas- 
ter Darwin left us and went back to the office. 
I says, ‘What are ye going back t’ the lawyer 
for?’ and he says, ‘I don’t mind telling you. Mas- 
ter Shaw, but it’s to make my will.” And off he 
goes. Now, there’s only two more things be- 
tween that and death. Jack March! And one’s 
the parson, and t’ other’s the doctor. 


SCENE VIII. 


Little Phoebe Shaw coming 
out of the day-school, and pick- 
ing her way home to tea, was 
startled by folk running past 
her, and by a sound of cheering 
from the far end of the village, 
whieh gradually increased in 
volume, and was caught up by 
the bystanders as they ran. 
When Phoebe heard that it was “Constable, and 
Master Shaw, and Daddy Darwin and his lad, 
coming home, and the pigeons along wi’ ’em,” 
she felt inclined to run too; but a fit of shyness 
came over her, and she demurely decided to wait 
by the school-gate till they came her way. They 
did not come. They stopped. What were they 
doing? Another bystander explained, “They’re 
shaking hands wi’ Daddy, and I reckon they’re 
making him put up t’ birds here, to see ’em go 
home to t’ Dovecot.” 

Phoebe ran as if for her life. She loved beast 
and bird as well as Jack himself, and the fame 

64 



DADDY DARWIN’S DOVECOT 55 

of Daddy Darwin’s doves was great. To see 
them put up by him to fly home after such an 
adventure was a sight not lightly to be foregone. 
The crowd had moved to a hillock in a neighbor- 
ing field before she touched its outskirts. By that 
time it pretty well numbered the population of 
the village, from the oldest inhabitant to the 
youngest that could run. Phoebe had her moth- 
er’s courage and resource. Chirping out feebly, 
but clearly, “I’m Maester Shaw’s little lass, will 
ye let me through?” she was passed from hand to 
hand, till her little fingers found themselves in 
Jack’s tight clasp, and he fairly lifted her to her 
father’s side. 

She was just in time. Some of the birds had 
hung about Jack, nervous, or expecting peas; 
but the hesitation was past. Free in the sweet 
sunshine — beating down the evening air with sil- 
ver wings and their feathers like gold — ignorant 
of cold eggs and callow young dead in deserted 
nests — sped on their way by such a roar as rarely 
shook the village in its body corporate — they flew 
straight home — to Daddy Darwin’s Dovecot. 


CF C. 


SCENE IX. 


Daddy Darwin lived a good 
many years after making his 
will, and the Dovecot prospered 
in his hands. It would be more 
just to say that it prospered in 
the hands of Jack March. By 
hook and by crook he increased 
the live stock about the place. 
Folk were kind to one who had 
set so excellent an example to other farm lads, 
though he lacked the primal virtue of belong- 
ing to the neighborhood. He bartered pigeons 
for fowls, and some one gave him a sitting of 
eggs to “see what he would make of ’em.” 
Master Shaw gave him a little pig, with kind 
words and good coimsel; and Jack cleaned out 
the disused pigstys, which were never disused 
again. He scrubbed his pigs with soap and wa- 
ter as if they had been Christians, and the ad- 
mirable animals, regardless of the pork they 
were coming to, did him infinite credit, and 
brought him profit into the bargain, which he 



DADDY DARWIN’S DOVECOT 57 

spent on ducks’ eggs, and other additions to his 
farmyard family. 

The Shaws were very kind to him; and if Mrs. 
Shaw’s secrets must be told, it was because Phcebe 
was so unchangeably and increasingly kind to 
him, that she sent the pretty maid (who had a 
knack of knowing her own mind about things) 
to service. 

James March was a handsome, stalwart youth 
now, of irreproachable conduct, and with quali- 
ties which Mrs. Shaw particularly prized ; but he 
was but a farm-lad, and no match for her daugh- 
ter. 

Jack only saw his sweetheart once during sev- 
eral years. She had not been well, and was at 
home for the benefit of “native air.” He walked 
over the hill with her as they returned from 
church, and lived on the remembrance of that 
walk for two or three years more. Phoebe had 
given him her Prayer-book to carry, and he had 
found a dead flower in it, and had been jealous. 
She had asked if he knew what it was, and he had 
replied fiercely that he did not, and was not sure 
that he cared to know. 

“Ye never did know much about flowers,” said 
Phoebe, demurely; “it’s red bergamot.” 

“I love — red bergamot,” he whispered peni- 


58 DADDY DARWIN’S DOVECOT 

tently. “And thou owes me a bit. I gave thee 
some once.” And Phoebe had let him put the 
withered bits into his own hymn-book, which was 
more than he deserved. 

Jack was still in the choir, and taught in the 
Sunday-school where he used to learn. The par- 
son’s daughter had had her way ; Daddy Darwin 
grumbled at first, but in the end he got a bottle- 
green Sunday-coat out of the oak-press that 
matched the bedstead, and put the house-key into 
his pocket, and went to church too. Now, for 
years past he had not failed to take his place, 
week by week, in the pew that was traditionally 
appropriated to the use of the Darwins of Dove- 
cot. In such an hour the sordid cares of the secret 
panel weighed less heavily on his soul, and the 
things that are not seen came nearer — the house 
not made with hands, the treasures that rust and 
moth corrupt not, and which thieves do not break 
through to steal. 

Daddy Darwin died of old age. As his health 
failed. Jack nursed him with the tenderness of a 
woman; and kind inquiries, and dainties which 
Jack could not have cooked, came in from many 
quarters where it pleased the old man to find that 
he was held in respect and remembrance. 

One afternoon, coming in from the farmyard. 


DADDY DARWIN’S DOVECOT 


59 


Jack found him sitting by the kitchen-table as he 
had left him, but with a dread look of change 
upon his face. At first he feared there had been 
“a stroke,” but Daddy Darwin’s mind was clear 
and his voice firmer than usual. 

“My lad,” he said, “fetch me yon teapot out of 
the corner cupboard. T’ one wi’ a pole-house* 
painted on it, and some letters. Take care how 
ye shift it. It were t’ merry feast-potf at my 
christening, and yon’s t’ letters of my father’s 
and mother’s names. Take off t’ lid. There’s 
two bits of paper in the inside.” 

Jack did as he was bid, and laid the papers 
(one small and yellow with age, the other bigger, 
and blue, and neatly written upon) at his master’s 
right hand. 

“Read yon,” said the old man, pushing the 
small one towards him. Jack took it up wonder- 
ing. It was the letter he had written from the 
workhouse fifteen years before. That was all he 
could see. The past surged up too thickly before 
his eyes, and tossing it impetuously from him, he 
dropped on a chair by the table, and snatching 


*A pole-house is a small dovecot on the top of a pole. 
t“Merry feast-pot” is a name given to old pieces of ware, made 
in local potteries for local festivals. 


60 DADDY DARWIN’S DOVECOT 

Daddy Darwin’s hands he held them to his face 
with tears. 

“God hless thee!’’ he sohbed. “You’ve been a 
good maester to me!’’ 

“Daddy” wheezed the old man. “Daddy, not 
maester.” And drawing his right hand away, 
he laid it solemnly on the young man’s head. 
“God bless thee, and reward thee. What have I 
done i’ my feckless life to deserve a son? But if 
ever a lad earned a father and a home, thou hast 
earned ’em. Jack March.” 

He moved his hand again and laid it trembling 
on the paper. 

“Every word i’ this letter ye’ve made good. 
Every word, even to t’ bit at the end. ‘I love 
them Tumblers as if they were my own,’ says you. 
Lift thee head, lad, and look at me. They are 
thy own! . . Yon blue paper’s my last will 

and testament, made many a year back by Mr. 
Brown, of Green Street, Solicitor, and a very 
nice gentleman too; and witnessed by his clerks, 
two decent young chaps, and civil enough, but 
with too much watch-chain for their situation. 
Jack March, my son, I have left thee maester of 
Dovecot and all that I have. And there’s a bit 
of money in t’ bed-head that’ll help thee to make 
a fair start, and to bury me decently atop of my 


DADDY DARWIN’S DOVECOT 


61 


father and mother. Ye may let Bill Sexton toll 
an hour-bell for me, for I’m a old-standard, if I 
never were good for much. Maybe I might ha’ 
done better if things had happed in a different 
fashion; but the Lord knows all. I’d like a hymn 
at the grave. Jack, if the Vicar has no objections, 
and do thou sing if thee can. Don’t fret, my son, 
thou’st no cause. ’Twas that sweet voice o’ thine 
took me back again to public worship, and it’s 
not t’ least of all I owe thee. Jack March. A 
poor reason, lad, for taking up with a neglected 
duty — a poor reason — but the Lord is a God of 
mercy, or there’d be small chance for most on us. 
If Miss Jenny and her husband come to t’ Vic- 
arage this summer, say I left her my duty and 
an old man’s blessing ; and if she wants any roots 
out of t’ garden, give ’em her, and give her yon 
old chest that stands in the back chamber. It be- 
longed to an uncle of my mother’s — a Derby- 
shire man. They say her husband’s a rich gentle- 
man, and treats her very well. I reckon she may 
have what she’s a mind, new and polished, but 
she’s always for old lumber. They’re a whimsical 
lot, gentle and simple. And talking of women. 
Jack, I’ve a word to say, if I can fetch my breath 
to say it. Lad ! as sure as you’re maester of Dove- 
cot, you’ll give it a missus. Now take heed to 


62 


DADDY DARWIN’S DOVECOT 


me. If ye fetch any woman home here but 
Phoebe Shaw, I’ll walk, and scare ye away from 
t’ old place. I’m willing for Phoebe, and I charge 
ye to tell the lass so hereafter. And tell her it’s 
not because she is fair — too many on ’em are 
that; and not because she’s thrifty and house- 
proud — her mother’s that, and she’s no favorite 
of mine; but because I’ve watched her whenever 
t’ ould cat’s let her be at home, and it’s my belief 
that she loves ye, knowing nought of this"’ (he 
laid his hand upon the will) , and that she’ll stick 
to ye, choose what her folks may say. Ay, ay, 
she’s not one of t’ sort that quits a falling house 
— like rattens.” 

Language fails to convey the bitterness which 
the old man put into these last two words. It 
exhausted him, and his mind wandered. When 
he had to some extent recovered himself he spoke 
again, but very feebly. 

“Tak’ my duty to the Vicar, lad. Daddy Dar- 
win’s duty, and say he’s at t’ last feather of the 
shuttle, and would be thankful for the Sacra- 
ment.” 

The Parson had come and gone. Daddy Dar- 
win did not care to lie down, he breathed with 
difficulty; so Jack made him easy in a big arm- 


DADDY DARWIN’S DOVECOT 


63 


chair, and raked up the fire with einders, and 
took a chair on the other side of the hearth to 
watch with him. The old man slept eomfortably, 
and at last, much wearied, the young man dozed 
also. 

He awoke because Daddy Darwin moved, but 
for a moment he thought he must be dreaming. 
So erect the old man stood, and with such delight 
in his wide-open eyes. They were looking over 
Jack’s head. 

All that the lad had never seen upon his face 
seemed to have eome baek to it — youth, hope, 
resolution, tenderness. His lips were trembling 
with the smile of acutest joy. 

Suddenly he stretched out his arms, and cry- 
ing, “Alice!” started forward and fell — dead — 
on the breast of his adopted son. 

Craw ! Craw 1 Craw ! The erows flapped slowly 
home, and the Gaffers moved off too. The sun 
was down, and “damps” are bad for “rheu- 
maties.” 

“It’s a strange tale,” said Gaffer II., but if 
all’s true ye tell me, there’s not too many like 
him.” 

“That’s right enough,” Gaffer I. admitted. 
“He’s been t’ same all through, and ye should ha’ 


64 


DADDY DARWIN’S DOVECOT 


seen the burying he gave t’ ould chap. He was 
rare and good to him by all accounts, and never 
gainsaid him ought, except i’ not lifting his voice 
as he should ha’ done at t’ grave. Jack sings a 
bass solo as well as any man i’ t’ place; but he 
stood yonder, for all t’ world like one of them 
crows, black o’ visage, and black wi’ funeral 
clothes, and choked with crying like a child i’stead 
of a man.” 

“Well, well, t’ ould chap were all he had, I 
reckon,” said Gaffer II. 

“That’s right enough; and for going back- 
wards, as ye may see, and setting a wild graff on 
an old standard, yon will’s done well for Daddy 
Darwin’s Dovecot.” 










